Engagement with pro- and anti-regime framing of the war in Ukraine on Russian social media

Urman, Aleksandra; Makhortykh, Mykola (20 July 2023). Engagement with pro- and anti-regime framing of the war in Ukraine on Russian social media (Unpublished). In: IC2S2. 17-20 July 2023.

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The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has been framed by the Kremlin as a "special operation" rather than a war. This framing may be intended to avoid legal and domestic risks associated with a declared war, and to maintain the perception of Russian superiority. To understand how the Russian public engages with pro- and anti-regime framing of the war, we used social media data from VKontakte (VK) a combination of natural language processing and descriptive statistics. We found that while the Kremlin frames the invasion as a "special operation," many social media users still use the term "war." Posts about deceased Russian soldiers are the most prevalent topic and are actively engaged with by VK users. The "war" content often contains references to WWII, which reinforces the Kremlin's tendency to selectively instrumentalize WWII memory. Differences in demographics and content consumption preferences exist between VK users who published posts about the "special operation" or "war" and the random sample of VK users. These findings suggest that the framing of the war desired by the Kremlin does not fully align with public opinion on social media.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Division/Institute:	03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Institute of Communication and Media Studies (ICMB)
UniBE Contributor:	Urman, Aleksandra, Makhortykh, Mykola
Subjects:	000 Computer science, knowledge & systems > 070 News media, journalism & publishing 300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology 300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 320 Political science 900 History
Language:	English
Submitter:	Mykola Makhortykh
Date Deposited:	02 Oct 2023 09:46
Last Modified:	02 Oct 2023 09:46
Uncontrolled Keywords:	VK, Russian, Ukraine, war, propaganda, memory, Second World War
URI:	https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/186817